NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

There has been a small but determined movement to push Chamorros towards tribal/Native American status for a few years now. There are those who believe it to be the best or only path forward for the Chamorro people given the colonial frameworks they are ensnared by. The statement below is from The Chamorro Tribe itself, which has been advocating this in various forms for about a decade (as far as I can tell). This idea resurfaces every couple of years, usually when a politician decides to take up the cause as a way of providing a seemingly simple solution to a very complicated problem, namely decolonization. A few years ago Senator Judith Gutherz was advocating for it. This past year Felix Camacho in his race for non-voting delegate advocated the same thing. I am getting ready to catch a flight and so I can't talk much about this now. But in time I plan to write more. For now here is the statement of the Chairman of the Chamorro Tribe, Frank Schacher. It can be found on their webs…

I've been wanting to write up some of my thoughts on i manggana' yan i manmapedde' in Election 2012 for Guam, but haven't gotten around to it yet. In the meantime, check out some of Ron McNinch's thoughts. He makes some good points, especially in terms of why certain candidates lost. I'm hoping to find some time this weekend since I also need to finalize my Guam Political Sign Awards for 2012. 

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"Exit Poll and Additional Notes on the 2012 'Sniper' Election"
 Dr. Ron McNinch
Letter to the Editor
Marianas Variety
11/08/12

OUR STUDENT exit poll showed 13 out of the 15 elected and had an overall placement rank of +/- 3.15 ranks for the top 20 places and a +/- 2.5 rank for the top 15. In general, both senators named Judi dropped nine places due to limiting voting effects. Judi Won Pat dropped from 1st to 10th and Judi Guthertz dropped from 10th to 19th. Exit polls are samples of voting behavior and are unlikely to detect …

I gayu-hu siha para i botasion 2012, hu pega i na'an-niha siha guini magi gi este na post.

Tailugat yu' pa'go ya ti sina hu tuge' sa' hafa hu ayek siha, lao siempre bai hu na'klaru ayu gi otro diha.

Gi i Democrat na patida na banda:

Ben Pangelinan
Judi Won Pat
Tom Ada
BJ Cruz
Rory Respicio
Tina Muna Barnes
Frank Aguon Jr.
Joe San Augustin

Gi i Republican na patida na banda

Aline Yamashita
Michelle Taitano
Roland Blas

Este nas dos, buente bai hu bota, lao ti siguru yu'.

Michael San Nicolas
Judith Guthertz


Anggen esta maregister hao, na'siguru na mambota hao pa'go.

Anggen ti maregister hao, sa' hafa? Sa' hafa un yuyute' i direcho-mu?

The conservative echo chamber on Guam isn’t very large but it is very persistent. Guam doesn’t really have a Fox News that can pound into our heads everyday a consistent, hateful terrifying public ideology. Some Chamorros say that K57 News and talk radio plays that role, but this isn’t really true. K57 has the interesting role of being fairly liberal in a national context, but fairly conservative in a local context. K57, like most media on Guam is pretty inconsistent in its messaging. 

Even though there is no mecca for this conservative echo chamber it still exists. This network exists through the collection of certain events, figures and signifiers. Over time this collection gains strength and loses strength. These signifiers can at certain moments achieve a potent and undeniable aura, and other times bleed insignificance.
This collection doesn’t exist for the same reason that conservative networks exist in the states. In Guam what pumps life into this network, what makes it fee…

From GUAMPDN: 5:30AMUnofficial results of the Primary Election as of 5:30 a.m., with 58 of 58 precincts counted.
PUBLIC AUDITOR
Brooks, Doris Flores 14,027
Gutierrez, Carl (write-in) 4,692
5:00 AMUnofficial results of the Primary Election as of 5 a.m., with 58 of 58 precincts counted. All election races, except public auditor race.
DELEGATE
DEMOCRAT
Bordallo, Madeleine Z. (I)    7,866
Dizon, Karlo 2,829
REPUBLICAN
Blas, Frank Flores Jr. 5,301

INDEPENDENT
Diaz, Jonathan Frank Blas 86
LEGISLATURE

DEMOCRAT
Rodriguez, Dennis G Jr. (I)        7,721
Aguon, Jr, Frank Blas        7,572
Ada, Thomas C “Tom” (I)        7,447
Muna Barnes, Tina Rose (I) 6,833
Cruz, Benjamin J.F. (I)        6,697
Won Pat, Judith T Perez (I)         6,674
Pangelinan, Vicente C. (I)        6,660
San Nicolas, Michael F.Q.         6,570
Respicio, Rory J. (I)        6,392
San Agustin, Joe S.          6,382
Palacios, Adolpho Borja Sr. (I)        6,306
Guthertz, Judith P. (I)        6,175
Naholowaa, Leah Beth Oligario         5,401
Gum…

There has been so much discussion lately about the "positions" of people, especially politicians on the military buildup. The concept of the buildup has been discussed so much for the past seven years, you could think there might be nothing left to say. You might assume that after years of debates, revelations, protests and so on, we might have finally come to the point where the buildup might hold no new ideological turns. It might just simply be a thing that has been hollowed out of all ideological ore and so people can speak about it in banal and normal ways.

You could assume these things and for the most part you'd be right. The years of debate did help bring into the world and into reality the buildup as an idea. Less people believe the hype about it and I mean this on both ends of the ideological spectrum. Less people believe in the buildup as a golden ticket, but also far fewer people believe in it as a rampaging beast. In the early days of buildup discussion so …

The Marianas Variety has a habit lately of putting huge images of people talking on their front page. A few months back, when there was some back and forth debating between JGPO and We Are Guahan at the Rotary Club. The front page of the Variety first had a large, almost poster size image of i matan WAG and my Starcraft 2 bromance buddy Leevin Camacho, in the middle of a word. The week after, they had an image of Colonel Jackson from JGPO, also mid-word. The images weren't that interesting, since it was just people speaking, but the size of them caught me and others off guard.

In today's Marianas Variety there was another tall and large frontpage image, yet this time rather than merely representing the act of someone speaking, it was meant to convey deep and serious emotions. The Governor of Guam, Eddie Calvo is standing tall, his hands folded below his waist before him. Rather than the usual images of politicians that we find in the media, which show them staged as happy, bli…

The Guam First Commission was proposed several years ago as a means through which the Guam Legislature could help participate in the planning of the military buildup for Guam. Since the announcement of the buildup, all information and planning had happened through the Governor's office, and they had been far more secretative than probably necessary about what was happening. He created the CMTF or the Civilian Military Task Force to oversee things, but much of the information that the CMTF collected or reports they made weren't for the public, but were rather to the help the military with the writing of their Draft Environmental Impact Statement. It seemed that Camacho saw the buildup as his baby, his legacy for the island, something that he would shepherd through and be the one responsible for all the fantastic things it would bring to the island.
As he kept everything close to his chest, the Legislature, for political reasons as well as general concern, wanted in on the loop…

After the Record of Decision was signed, the Pacific Daily News collected responses from Senators in the Guam Legislature, detailing their thoughts and concerns on the military buildup finally being officially declared "begun."
I have pasted them below for people to read and reflect on. I have heard so many people over the past few months speak with some satisfaction that the rhetoric of so many of our political leaders have changed, that the efforts of so many who were critical of the buildup have helped make it so that no potential political leader who wants to be taken seriously can be 100% supportive of the military buildup, but instead has to hover around 50% - 70% good and the rest bad. This is a very real shift in rhetoric since for the first few years of the buildup, politicians would try to convince people that the buildup was a boon, that it was great and that the problems were minor and not such a big deal. That was how the public was shaped back then, in such a …